in New York pointed out in 1911, a greater number of acres was needed for parks on the lower East Side than was occupied by the entire population. This case is extreme but representative. It is the peculiarity of our metropolitan civilization, then, that in spite of vast resources drawn from the ends of the earth, it has an insufficient civic equipment, and what it does possess it uses only transiently. Those cities that have the beginnings of an adequate equipment, like New York--to choose no more invidious example--offer them chiefly to those engaged in travelling. As a traveller’s city New York is near perfection. An association of cigar salesmen or an international congress of social scientists, meeting in one of the auditoriums of a big hotel, dining together, mixing in the lounge, and finding recreation in the theatres hard by, discovers an environment that is ordered, within its limits, to a nicety. It is this hotel and theatre district that we must charitably think of when we are tempted to speak about the triumphs of the American city. Despite manifold defects that arise from want of planning, this is the real civic centre of America’s Metropolis. What we must overlook in this characterization are the long miles of slum that stretch in front and behind and on each side of this district--neighbourhoods where, in spite of the redoubtable efforts of settlement workers, block organizers, and neighbourhood associations, there is no permanent institution, other than the public school or the sectarian church, to remind the inhabitants that they have a common life and a common destiny. Civic life, in fine, the life of intelligent association and common action, a life whose faded pattern still lingers in the old New England town, is not something that we daily enjoy, as we work in an office or a factory. It is rather a temporary state that we occasionally achieve with a great deal of time, bother, and expense. The city is not around us, in our little town, suburb, or neighbourhood: it lies beyond us, at the end of a subway ride or a railway journey. We are citizens occasionally: we are suburbanites (_denizens_, _idiots_) by regular routine. Small wonder that bathtubs and heating systems and similar apparatus play such a large part in our conception of the good life.